Kampong Cham

Last weekend, Stephen and I traveled to Kampong Cham so I could write an update for Travelfish, a Southeast Asia travel guide. We spent three days in the city, and its quiet streets and calm boardwalk along the Mekong River offered a respite from dusty, fluorescent Phnom Penh.

The editor tasked me with visiting all the hotels, restaurants, and sights of the city, an enjoyable experience but also stressful on the time constraints. We rented a moto and drove through narrow, tree-lined Cham (Muslim Cambodians of Malay descent) villages with marshland and distant pagodas to the left and the river to the right.

First we visited Han Chay, a series of pagodas and a monastery set atop a steep hill. At one part, the hill drops off and dozens of cows, their sallow, white backs hunched over, chomp on brush. At another, anatomically correct statues of wild animals and mythical beasts dot a small garden area and path. We spoke to a monk briefly; he held the cigarette he was smoking behind his back the entire time. Stephen climbed a tall, flagless flagpole stuck into a platform that jutted out from the hillside.

Afterward, we drove to a monkey-covered pagoda set atop another steep hill. Next to it, we found an old Vietnam War-era air strip, only recognizable because of the width and flatness of the stone path. A decaying pillbox rested on the sloping hill next to it. Inside the crumbling stone walls, we found feces, some garbage, and views of the hills. As we drove down the pebble-lain runway, our tire popped for the second time that day, and we wheeled the moped two the nearest village. There, a woman with a round, pregnant belly, poured liquid rubber on the hole and ignited the mixture to fuse it. Fumes swirled up toward her unmasked face.

As we waited for her to finish the job, a crowd formed. Whenever our two, big white bodies lumber into a rural village, we cause quite the commotion. I feel a bit like E.T. after he’s discovered by humans. The kids told me their names, and we pointed to features on our faces and exchanged our words for them. A little boy pulled out a magic marker and drew the face of a white woman on a cement column near the side of the road. Stephen helped a little girl, maybe 7, take a huge, rusty saw to a giant slab of ice. We returned to town, argued with our lender about how much we should pay for his defective moto, and fell asleep.

The next day, we finished my Travelfish research by completing the arduous task of visiting the remaining sights of the town. It’s still a bit surreal that someone has agreed to pay me for this, even if it’s not much. We traveled downriver to another well-known Wat. Behind a massive temple was a small, crumbling wooden pagoda, painted blue. The Khmer Rouge attempted to destroy it in the late 1970s, but most of the paint has been scraped off to reveal depictions of traditional Khmer life and tales of Buddhist morality. Behind the temples, we found more animal statues, and, among them, live cows and horses. We met a few of the monks, as well as two men sipping a sweet, refreshing liquid tapped from the tree they sat beside. They offered me their cup and I tasted a sip.

Then we rode the boat further downriver and visited a weaving village. Underneath most of the stilted homes, young girls through old women sat at long looms, weaving together strands died bright purples, greens, and reds. They look like organists with their delicate feet maneuvering foot pedals attached to ropes that manipulate the loom’s movement. Stray dogs surrounded us, notifying their kind farther ahead that strange-looking two-leggers had descended onto their turf. A herd surrounded us, barking and snarling, their matted fur flecked with mud and bugs, their overused teats hanging down.

I felt relieved to leave the village filled with nice people and nasty canines. In general, the dogs here seem better taken care of than in other poor countries. Fewer strays, more pets. The ones we encountered that day scared the crap out of me. We left later that day on a bus back to Phnom Penh.